Explanation:
This sharp telescopic
field of view holds two bright galaxies.
Barred spiral
NGC 5101
(top right) and
nearly edge-on system
NGC 5078
are separated
on the sky by about 0.5 degrees or about the apparent width of a full
moon.
Found within the boundaries of the serpentine
constellation Hydra,
both are estimated to be around 90 million light-years away and
similar in size to our own large Milky Way galaxy.
In fact,
if they both lie at the same distance their
projected
separation would be only 800,000 light-years or so.
That's easily less than half the distance between the
Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.
NGC 5078 is interacting with a smaller companion galaxy, catalogued as
IC 879, seen just left of the larger galaxy's bright core.
Even more distant background galaxies are scattered
around the colourful field.
Some are even visible right through the face-on disk of NGC 5101.
But the prominent spiky stars are in
the foreground, well within our own Milky Way.